Many jobs and tasks in industry and laboratories require precision motion control. The degree of rigidity and the amount of table travel in the X, Y, and Z planes are important considerations in most applications. Standard Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines are commonly used in order to fulfill these needs. These CNC machines are necessarily complex and relatively expensive. CNC machines can be miniaturized but rigidity is compromised mainly because a smaller ball screw has to be used. An alternate solution is to custom build a special machine or to retrofit an existing machine. However, people not skilled in these areas cannot easily perform these tasks and the custom build or retrofit can end up costing more than the purchase of a standard CNC machine.
Applications such as composite/fiberglass machining are usually performed on standard CNC milling machines that are primarily made for machining metals and are relatively expensive. CNC machines have relatively large built-in spindles that cannot achieve sufficiently high rotations per minute (RPM) for efficient machining of composite type materials. In addition, because these types of materials are non-conductive to heat, the cutting tool gets very hot, leaves burn marks, and shortens the life of the cutting tool. In many applications coolants cannot be used because the material absorbs the contamination in the liquid coolant. In order to solve this problem, a high-speed spindle is sometimes custom installed. High-speed spindles are smaller than the standard spindles on milling machines and have much less horsepower. Therefore, much of the heavy weight and sturdiness of the machine is not utilized as the smaller horsepower spindle becomes the limiting factor. Therein is a need for a machine that can easily adapt a high-speed spindle and is rigid enough to machine composite type materials, flat stock type metals, such as aluminum sheets, and small precision metal parts.
Precision motion control is a necessary requirement in the robotics field, which uses the same or similar CNC capabilities and functions as applied to CNC machine tools. Robotics are often viewed as an articulating arm with a hand-like device that performs a task. In some industrial sectors robotics can also mean a machine that can move a functional tool or instrument in a multi-dimensional plane with a certain degree of precision in order to perform a task.
The machine of this invention is made to be capable of use in both machining and robotics areas. The invention is relatively light but relatively rigid. The invention fulfills most travel requirements, is mobile and portable, and is easily serviceable by the end user. Finally, the invention is suitable for a wide range of CNC and other robotic applications which are presently done on more expensive and necessarily complex CNC machines or custom-built machines.